Definition:

American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM)'s Level of Care is a fancy way of saying "the amount of treatment a person needs to recover." Using the ASAM criteria to determine how severe the person's needs are, this should be reassessed often throughout treatment, usually every 30–90 days.

Today the criteria have become the most widely used and comprehensive set of guidelines for placement, continued stay, and transfer/discharge of patients with addiction and co-occurring disorders (COD). ASAM's criteria are required in over 30 states.

ASAM's criteria is an indispensable resource that addiction medicine professionals rely on to provide a nomenclature for describing the continuum of addiction services.

More about ASAM levels of care can be found here and here.

Reflecting a Continuum of Care chart from 0 to 4. 0.5: Early Intervention. 1: Outpatient Services. 2: Intensive Outpatient/Partial Hospitalization Services. 2.1: Intensive Outpatient Services. 2.5: Partial Hospitalization Services. 3: Residential/Inpatient Services. 3.1: Clinically Managed Low-Intensity Residential Services. 3.3: Clinically Managed Population-Specific High-Intensity Residential Services. 3.5: Clinically Managed High-Intensity Residential Services. 3.7: Medically Monitored Intensive Inpatient Services. 4: Medically Managed Intensive Inpatient Services.

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